missions/missionaries part 2

I’ve been doing student observership at the Chinese Australian Baptist Church in West Ryde this year. There had been many missionaries speaking to us lately, and I also read an article recently written by Rev Ross Paterson. I am starting to sense the importance of a supportive sending church if we are to do missions. I also started to think about the definition of doing missions and missionaries. Although workers are needed everywhere, the Scriptures specifically mentions “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19), “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). So there seems to be two important components: cross-cultural and geographical, ie. Mingling with different people groups, a sending out to reach the unreached people abroad. I find that many Chinese churches don’t seem to grasp this concept. For example, in Taiwan, there is not much opportunity to get cross-cultural experiences in the first place, and people don’t hold a “global” perspective, so rapidly propagating churches are either forming into mega churches or planting branches rapidly, but not many missionaries are being formed in the process. In Western nations, there are some “immigrant” Chinese churches whose target population seem to be the immigrant Chinese. Some of these churches have the concept of planting churches, which is a good concept, but the problem lies with the geographical location/ distribution: there are already so many churches in Western nations, and these immigrant Chinese churches are still not able to send that many missionaries to unreached people groups. Sometimes a church may grow in numbers because of the movement of sheep from one church to another, not because of an increase in the number of new believers. So, I am pretty impressed that the mission statement for CABC-WR mentions spreading the gospel “to the ends of the earth”. But around late Wednesday night or midnight Thursday morning, a suspicious fire broke out in the high school where the Cantonese and English congregation gathers, so intercession is needed for the church currently.

There is this popular talk amongst the Chinese churches about how God is raising the Chinese to spread the gospel back to Jerusalem. My personal theological viewpoint is that if God really wants to do this thing, and the Chinese are not responding to the call, God can still use other people to accomplish his work. Analogous to how Saul was anointed by God to be king, but Saul became increasingly disobedient and got abandoned by God. And why even emphasise on the Chinese in particular? I think it is a cooperative effort by people of all nations. It is not easy to answer a call though: strong faith and great sacrifices have to be made in order to step into cross-cultural missions abroad.

This semester, I picked the subject “Baptist Distinctives” to find out more about the Baptist denomination, and whether there is a calling in this direction. Coincidentally, the pastor of the English congregation accidentally sent a church membership form. Initially I was very confused because I had no idea what the email was about, and when I asked the Mandarin congregation pastor she was equally confused then realised it was sent accidentally. Anyways, started my exploration into the prescribed textbook today, and was surprised that the following people had Baptist origins: William Carey (father of modern missions), John D. Rockefeller (the wealthiest American of all time and the richest person in modern history), Charles E. Fuller (a radio evangelist who founded the Fuller Seminary, the largest cross-denominational seminary in the world), Billy Graham, Martin Luther King Jr, and Rick Warren!